The following is Part 1 of a three-part extract from Frank Tallis’ excellent book Love Sick. The book takes a good look at romantic love, or more accurately the sickness of it, a fact underlined in several of the articles on this website. Dr. Tallis’ extensive clinical experience confirms just how sick-making these practices are for all who indulge them.
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Incurable Romantics

Love, love, love – all the wretched cant of it, masking egotism, lust, masochism, fantasy under a mythology of sentimental postures, a welter of self-induced miseries and joys, blinding and masking the essential personalities in the frozen gestures of courtship, in the kissing and the dating and the desire, the compliments and the quarrels which vivify its barrenness.

The Female Eunuch, Germaine Greer

Romantic love has been described by the Jungian psychoanalyst Robert Johnson as `the single greatest energy system in the Western psyche’. Although this sounds like a wildly extravagant claim, it is almost certainly true. Love – and in particular romantic love – is our great preoccupation. Almost every aspect of our life is affected, in some way, by the concept of romantic love.

The word ‘romantic’ is troubled by a long history. It is like an overworked canvas, the composition and brushwork of which cannot conceal the suggestion of earlier drafts. English dictionaries distinguish ‘romantic’ with several definitions, but in reality, such tidy divisions are misleading. When we use the word, these different meanings bleed into each other. To be romantically involved is an admission that carries a host of implications: passion, folly, obsession, anguish, recklessness, intrigue, and adventure; archetypes rise from varying depths and jostle with each other for recognition and influence.

As with any native tongue, we first speak the language of romantic love without being able to explain its grammar. The assumptions on which romantic love is predicated are buried in the unconscious mind, where they exert a powerful influence on our beliefs, attitudes, and expectations. We never pause to question their legitimacy. When a romantic hero decides he will sacrifice everything for love, no one will ask ‘Is she really worth it?’ or ‘Can’t he find someone else?’ Romantic love has its own obscure logic which we all tacitly accept.

The roots of romantic love run deep. Indeed, the fundamental mental conventions of romantic love were consolidated on the ancestral plains of Africa, where evolutionary pressures determined that men should court women, that women should be coy, that relationships should be exclusive, and that love should storm the mind like a form of madness. However, since the rise of civilisation, these features have been increasingly complicated by ideological factors. The roots of romantic love are profoundly deep, but, now, they are also hopelessly tangled.

To understand fully the concept of romantic love requires an examination of its cultural history (in addition to its evolutionary history)…

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The Islamic courtly tradition was introduced into Western culture by the troubadours, whose poetry preserved many features of Arab mysticism – particularly, a quasi-religious praise of female beauty. However, as this theme was reworked, it also began to change. Spiritual inaccessibility gradually evolved into alluring aloofness, which in turn became regal disdain. Thus, a recurring figure in troubadour poetry was the cold, cruel mistress.

The theme of inaccessibility was also explored in another way: the introduction of a female character, immensely desirable, but unavailable through marriage.

Even at this very early stage, the authenticity of love was being judged according to its difficulty (with respect to obstacles and impediments) and its irrationality. In troubadour poetry, we can recognise the cultural ancestry of modern concepts such as Lee’s mania or Tennov’s limerence: love that does not need liking – love that may even thrive in response to rejection or contempt. The troubadour’s cruel mistress reappears again and again in literature in different guises: the enchantress, the femme fatale, the Belle Dame sans Merci. Long before psychologists began to study love in a systematic way, literature required a particular female type who would represent unhappy love.

The doctrine of romantic love (also known as courtezia or amour courtois) would have spread across Europe irrespective of royal patronage; however, the process was certainly accelerated by events at the court of Poitiers, where William IX is reputed to have been ‘the first troubadour’ (on account of having written the earliest surviving examples of coutly verse in the Provencal language). It was also at Poitiers that William’s granddaughter, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and her daughter, Marie de Champagne, encouraged celebrated poets such as Bernard de Ventadour and Chretien de Troyes to compose works that exemplified courtly ideals. A narrative vehicle that was popular among the poets of Poitiers was Arthurian legend, which delivered a cast of characters whose relationships could be fully exploited to dramatise the frustrating dynamics of romantic love. Thus, Guinevere’s beauty is beyond compare, and Lancelot – Arthur’s most loyal servant – must fall hopelessly in love with the queen. (English readers are more familiar with this dynamic through Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur.) In the poetry of Chretien de Troyes, love – always complicated, but even more complicated by courtly conventions – is once again described as an illness: ‘My illness is what I want. And my pain is my health… I suffer agreeably… I am sick with delight.’

One of the most extraordinary developments at Poitiers was the creation of an inner court – the Court of Love – where noblewomen would meet to pose questions about love and the proper conduct of lovers. Questions would then be disputed, juried and judged, according to the increasingly dogmatic principles of courtezia. Perhaps, in an effort to make the task of this inner court easier, Marie instructed a cleric, Andrew Capelanus (also known as Andrew the Chaplain), to write a formal book of statutes: a kind of lovers’ charter.

Andrew began his task by consulting a classical authority – the Ars Amatoria (or Art of Love) by Ovid. It is difficult to imagine a more inappropriate work on which to base a ‘respectable’ canon. As with much to do with romantic love, history reveals cross-purposes, because for Ovid adoration is only a means to an end. Ovid adores, not because he can’t help himself, but because by feigning adoration he is more likely to succeed in seduction. He is a cunning and manipulative strategist, who advises on everything from good ‘chat up’ lines to how physical defects can be concealed by adopting special positions during intercourse. In an age of political correctness, he is still able to offend modern sensibilities. He recommends pretending to cry, making false promises, writing flattering verses (however insincere) and even coercion: `Some force is permissible – women are often pleased by force.’

Ovid also advises the aspirant libertine to affect the symptoms of love sickness: ‘All lovers should be pallid, it’s chic to be pale;/ Only fools deny it, pale skins rarely fail.’ Moreover, he observes that loss of appetite and worry ‘make the young lover as thin as a rake’. Therefore, if wishing to attract the attention of women, one should: `Look lean – it suggests passion.’

When Andrew Capelanus came to write his own work – The Art of Courtly Love – he did so by borrowing from Ovid. Thus, Ovid’s cynical observations were used to shore up the romantic ideal. Love sickness – merely another weapon in Ovid’s armamentarium – became fully established as a crucial sign of love’s authenticity.

Capelanus described love as `a certain inborn suffering’ and suggested thirty-one rules of love. They include the following:

Rule 2 He who is not jealous cannot love.
Rule 9 No one can love unless he is impelled by the persuasion of love (also translated as: No one can love who is not driven to do so by the power of love).
Rule 13 When made public love rarely endures.
Rule 14 The easy attainment of love makes it of little value; difficulty of attainment makes it prized.
Rule 15 Every lover regularly turns pale in the presence of his beloved.
Rule 16 When a lover suddenly catches sight of his beloved his heart palpitates.
Rule 20 A man in love is always apprehensive (also translated as: A lover is always fearful).
Rule 21 Real jealousy always increases the feeling of love.
Rule 22 Jealousy, and therefore love, are increased when one suspects his beloved.
Rule 30 A true lover is constantly and without intermission possessed by the thought of his beloved (Also translated as: The true lover is continuously obsessed with the image of his beloved.

Love and mental illness were closely linked according to the principles of Hippocratic medicine; however, Capelanus’s principles seem to do much the same thing. At Poitiers it was decided that love – if true – must be disturbed and slightly perverse; it must be obsessive, compulsive, agitated, anxious, jealous, suspicious, clandestine, and frustrating.

There is still some debate concerning to what extent Capelanus meant his rules to be taken seriously. It is possible that The Art of Courtly Love was meant to be satirical – but if so, its satirical content was lost on contemporary and subsequent generations. The Art of Courtly Love was never viewed as a critique. It was always viewed as a manifesto.

Romantic love became an increasingly important feature of literature in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The Lais of Marie de France and de Lorris’s Romance of the Rose are significant examples; however, the quintessential courtly romance of the middle ages must be Tristan – now more widely encountered in the opera house as Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde.

Although Tristan does not feature King Arthur, it is an ‘Arthurian’ romance set in a landscape of castles, quests and dragons. An authenticated ‘original’ does not exist, but five versions have been handed down – the most famous being those of Beroul, Gottfried von Strassburg and Thomas.

Tristan is raised by his uncle, King Mark of Cornwall, and it falls upon him to escort King Mark’s bride-to-be, the beautiful Princess Isolde, from her home in Ireland to the king’s castle. While crossing the Irish Sea, they both mistakenly drink a love potion, and subsequently fall in love. The love potion – a potent symbol of love’s madness – neatly excuses Tristan’s betrayal of his uncle.

In Gottfried’s version, the bemused Tristan complains: `I do not know what has come over poor Isolde and me, but we have both of us gone mad in the briefest space of time, with unimaginable torment – we are dying of love …’

Tristan and Isolde (against their better judgement) become clandestine lovers and, in doing so, stir the gods of tragedy. Much of the ensuing drama concerns their attempts to avoid discovery, and eventually they must separate. Tristan is wounded by a poisoned spear and, as his life ebbs away, he calls for Isolde. She rushes to be with him, but arrives too late and can do nothing to save him. Clasping his dead body, she gives up her spirit and dies.

During the middle ages, romantic narrative’s landscape of kings and queens, knights and ladies, heroism, bravery, destiny and magic became established in the Western imagination, and is familiar to children, appearing in numerous story-books. The idea of romantic love has penetrated so deep into our culture, that few people escape its influence before leaving the nursery. Unfortunately, a consequence of this is that many grow up assuming they will find fairy-tale happiness in the real world – an expectation that is rarely fulfilled. Moreover, it is curious that the main exemplars of courtly romance (which in a sense foster our fairy-tale aspirations) rarely end with a `happy ever after’, but with torment, tears and death.

Continued in part-2….

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

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By Paul Elam

For the values centered model, I assume three states of being most typical to modern western men. Those are:

1. Gynocentric
2. Gynocentric Reactive
3. Gynocentric Proactive

Gynocentric refers to the average man. He usually, but not always, operates with women unconsciously, just following whatever scripts he has adopted from early life. He seeks women’s acceptance without an intact set of values that are designed to protect him. In fact, it is his values that put him at risk. Many men value only being accepted sexually and romantically, by any woman they are attracted to, regardless of her moral character and any possible risk she represents.

The gynocentric man is the one with a piece of paper that says kick me taped to his back. We can mock him if we want, but we are well to remember that we have all been this man at one point or another in our lives.

The next state of being, Gynocentric Reactive, is a much more complicated affair. Here we see men who are infinitely more conscious than gynocentric men. They are aware of relationship pitfalls, may even be quite familiar with concepts like gynocentrism, hypergamy and male disposability.

It is their reaction to that information that may foment troubles. These men can be perpetually fulminating and overtly hostile to anything female. It’s the “all women are bitches and hoes” crowd, and the ever present resentments they carry can cause emotional and psychological atrophy. They may have a diminished capacity for reason and defensively take refuge in an ideology that shields them from examining their anger productively.

Another manifestation of the gynocentric reactive man is one who hides inside emotional armor, simply reducing women to their sexual utility, doing their best to get sex then get out. Unfortunately, it is a form of self-protection that may well heighten risk with repeated sexual contact with women who have not been assessed for anything other than physical attraction.

Finally, there are still other gynocentric reactive men who are just frustrated by the realities of lived experience with women. They find themselves caught in a web of confusion and consternation. They tend to be understandably mistrustful of women, and sometimes vacillate between being indifferent to them and being attracted. They feel stuck and outgunned. Chronic loneliness is often part of their lot. For this reason, many of them may be attracted to the other forms of reaction-based mindsets that don’t leave them feeling so vulnerable.

Gynocentric Reactive men get call misogynists a lot. They’re not. Setting aside judgements about the efficacy of their state of being, they are just men rationally demonstrating the will to self-protect. Regardless of how tiring the perpetual anger may be, they are much more functional and conscious than the gynocentrist.

Finally, there is the Gynocentric Proactive man. He routinely operates consciously with women. He has a clearly identified, personally chosen set of values that trump his sexual instincts and significantly temper his need for female approval.

Whether he includes women in his life or not, he is not burdened by fear of, or resentment toward, them.

He does not tolerate abuse, doesn’t take unnecessary financial risks or commit thoughtlessly. He can be available for a relationship if he chooses. He is also willing and able to let a relationship go that threatens his well-being. And he can do it without undue emotional distress.

Importantly, he is willing, indeed insistent, on evaluating any woman on his radar for risk and maintenance concerns.

It is important to reiterate here that none of these states of being can be called wrong. They are simply ways of coping in the modern sexual milieu. Even the gynocentric male is trying to cope in his way.

I will point out, however, that when I see men belittling and shaming other men for not walking in lockstep with them, it usually comes from gynocentric and gynocentric reactive men. Those are also the two states of being where, exceptions notwithstanding, I have observed the least happiness and the least reasonable points of view.

So, obviously, the intent here is to suggest that there is much more benefit to men in a Gynocentric Proactive state of being. The benefits are certainly there for emotional health.

By Peter Wright & Paul Elam

El tema del ginocentrismo está siempre en el trasfondo de la filosofía de la pastilla roja. Volvió a surgir hace poco, en una crítica a una comentarista muy popular y muy crítica con el feminismo de tercera ola. Esto tocó una fibra sensible en el MHRM (Movimiento por los Derechos Humanos de los Hombres), y desencadenó un debate encendido, incluso resentido.

Creemos que esa fibra sensible está conectada directamente con una frontera divisoria; una línea de demarcación dentro del sector no feminista que consigue resurgir con regularidad dentro de este nuevo mensaje.

La historia indica que esta fricción volverá con mayor intensidad en los próximos meses y años. Ese calor aumentará paralelamente al aumento de popularidad del no feminismo. Merece la pena intentar identificar y explicar, de buena fe, lo que está ocurriendo. Puede que incluso consigamos reconducir algunos problemas.

Tradicionalismo vs. Modernismo

Aparentemente, se diría que desde hace mucho tiempo existe un conflicto entre los tradicionalistas y aquellos que querrían romper por completo con todas las construcciones sociales que establecen identidades y expectativas en base al sexo.

Sin embargo, el debate sobre el tradicionalismo es mucho más complejo que un mero desacuerdo entre los que quieren relaciones tradicionales vs. no tradicionales, un hecho que resulta mucho más evidente con cada estallido de controversia y disensión.

Sí, lo vamos a decir: NATALT (Not All Traditionalists Are Like That, «No todos los tradicionalistas son así»). No todo aquel que acepta algunos aspectos de las relaciones tradicionales acepta también la caballerosidad o la desechabilidad masculina.

En el pequeño pero existente pensamiento colectivo del MHRM hemos tendido a marcar unos límites bastante estrictos de lo que percibimos como relaciones tradicionales. Si ella trabaja en el hogar y él trabaja fuera, y/o ella es la que se ocupa principalmente de los hijos, y él corta el césped y se ocupa de las reparaciones caseras, tendemos a agruparlo todo en la misma categoría, a menudo de forma poco favorecedora.

Incluso hemos creado un término peyorativo, tradcon (traditional conservative, «conservador tradicional») para designar a quienes deciden seguir la vida familiar y de casado.

Esta división no es insignificante, y ha creado facciones y rupturas durante años dentro del movimiento principal.

Tradicionalistas ginocéntricos vs. Tradicionalistas no ginocéntricos

Pensamos que aquí está la diferencia definitiva más clara. Mucho más que la división entre tradicionalistas y no tradicionalistas, esta otra división identifica a aquellos que siguen legítimamente un camino que apoya la restauración del valor humano de hombres y niños.

Dentro de estafrontera divisoria también se pueden diferenciar dos tipos de acuerdos de relaciones: entre tradicionalistas ginocéntricos y tradicionalistas no ginocéntricos. Sin embargo, ambos grupos pueden decidir casarse y fundar una familia. Lo que queremos decir, sencillamente, es que uno de esos dos tipos de familia tiene mayores probabilidades de producir hijos más completos, individuos con agencia y responsabilidad.

La frontera divisoria, que merece existir, separa a aquellos que siguen los postulados de la caballerosidad y el amor romántico, y a aquellos que no lo hacen.

El tradicionalismo no ginocéntrico puede seguir basándose en una división de roles, siempre que sea una división equitativa en términos de esfuerzos y riesgos para la salud asociados. Esto quiere decir que las divisiones de roles no pueden basarse en la caballerosidad ni en otros tipos de servidumbre masculina. No hay división de tareas tal que pueda devolver o compensar la muerte de un hombre en su trabajo.

Por ejemplo, este texto de Modesta Pozzo en 1590 nos habla de la división de esfuerzos desigual, y por tanto de la tradición ginocéntrica:

“¿No vemos que la tarea legítima de los hombres es salir a trabajar y agotarse intentando acumular riquezas, como si fuesen nuestros criados o representantes, para que nosotras podamos quedarnos en el hogar como señoras de la casa, dirigiendo su trabajo y disfrutando del beneficio de su trabajo? Ese, si les parece, es el motivo de que los hombres sean naturalmente más fuertes y robustos que nosotras: lo necesitan para poder soportar el duro trabajo que deben llevar a cabo a nuestro servicio.” [1]

La descripción de los roles ginocéntricos tradicionales de Pozzo no es una simple teoría, como muestran las palabras de una coetánea suya, Lucrezia Marinella (c.1571-1653), que describía de esta manera la situación entre hombres y mujeres:

“Es una visión maravillosa, en nuestra ciudad, ver a la esposa de un zapatero, un carnicero o un porteador, bien arreglada con cadenas de oro alrededor del cuello, con perlas y valiosos anillos en los dedos, acompañada por un par de mujeres a cada lado que la asistan y ayuden, y por el contrario, ver a su marido cortando carne, manchado de sangre de buey y mal vestido, o cargado como una bestia de carga, vestido con ropa áspera como la que llevan los porteadores. Al principio puede parecer una increíble anomalía ver a la esposa vestida como una dama y al marido vestido de forma tan vil que a menudo se diría que es su sirviente o su criado, pero si consideramos el asunto correctamente, lo encontramos razonable, porque es necesario que una mujer, aunque sea de baja y humilde cuna, se ornamente de esa forma, por su dignidad y excelencia naturales, y que el hombre no lo haga tanto, como un sirviente o una bestia nacida para servirla a ella.” [2]

Este tipo de caballerosidad y amor romántico, que promueve un contrato sexual ginocéntrico entre el hombre y la mujer, es algo que puede abandonarse fácilmente aunque se sigan aceptando normas tradicionales que estrechen los lazos familiares y la educación de hijos funcionales y equilibrados.

Lo que queda después de extirpar el ginocentrismo son los aspectos beneficiosos de las relaciones tradicionales, como la división de tareas equilibrada (en la que tanto hombres como mujeres cortan carne y se empapan de sangre de buey) o tareas equilibradas en diferentes áreas (ella friega el baño y él corta el césped). La disposición de la mujer para el trabajo era muy común en el pasado, pues trabajaban regularmente como carniceras, panaderas y fabricantes de velas junto con sus cónyuges.

En esa atmósfera cooperativa de contribución mutua, hombres y mujeres se sentían más atraídos hacia el matrimonio y la pertenencia a una amplia y extensa familia, cuyos miembros cuidasen de la seguridad y la salud de la red familiar.

Hay otros aspectos del tradicionalismo que también merecen una mención, como aquellos que benefician a los hombres. Estos aspectos incluyen más tiempo entre padre e hijo, y la aceptación de poder disfrutar de los espacios masculinos, como las cantinas masculinas, los equipos deportivos, los salones de billar y las organizaciones fraternales: Elks, Masones, Golden Fleece y muchos otros. [3]

La pregunta, hoy en día, es dónde demonios puede un hombre encontrar una relación tradicional con una mujer que huya de la caballerosidad y del amor romántico, alias ginocentrismo. Es como buscar una aguja en un pajar, y por eso seguir tu propio camino, o más bien alejarte del tradicionalismo ginocéntrico, es lo más sensato que puede hacer un hombre.

Las escasas probabilidades de éxito son la razón por la que los hombres modernos rechazan las relaciones tradicionales con mujeres, incluso con las no ginocéntricas, en favor de nuevas y novedosas ideas: porque no creen que las mujeres de hoy estén dispuestas a corresponderles mientras la mano del ginocentrismo siga dando. Y a menudo tienen razón.

Los defensores de los derechos humanos de los hombres que deseen promover los aspectos beneficiosos o valiosos de las tradiciones tienen que ser más activos a la horade denunciar el ginocentrismo tóxico de las mismas; en caso contrario, los hombres que no estén dispuestos a jugar a la ruleta rusa con un mundo de princesas Disney seguirán desechando tanto lo bueno como lo malo sin miramientos.

Aun así, sigue quedando la pregunta de si los aspectos valiosos del tradicionalismo se pueden separar en la vida, ya que los aspectos buenos y malos llevan siglos interconectados.

La respuesta a esta pregunta probablemente sea afirmativa para aquellos pocos hombres con la perspicacia, inteligencia y determinación suficientes para crear esa clase de relaciones.

Pero lo que sigue siendo cierto es que esos hombres, y otros, no se van a beneficiar de una fachada de apoyo a los hombres que, una vez apartada, resulta tener detrás obediencia ginocéntrica y desechabilidad masculina.

Dicho en pocas palabras, el antifeminismo no basta. Enfrentarse a los justicieros sociales es un pasatiempo entretenido, pero por si solo es un falso aliado para los hombres preocupados por la misandria y la desechabilidad masculina.

Si te preocupa la humanidad de los hombres, su acceso a la compasión y la capacidad de decisión, harías mal en considerar tu aliado a cualquiera que diga en la misma frase que el feminismo es perjudicial, y que necesitamos que los hombres aprendan a tratar a las mujeres de acuerdo a un código de caballerosidad.

Fue ese mismo código el que se transformó en las olas contaminadas de ideología del feminismo.

Referencias:

[1] The Worth of Women: their Nobility and Superiority to Men (1590) «El valor de la mujer: su nobleza y superioridad frente al hombre»

[2] The Nobility and Excellence of Women and the Defects and Vices of Men (1600) «La nobleza y excelencia de la mujer y los defectos y vicios del hombre»

[3] Edward Ward, The Secret History of Clubs, (publicado en 1709). «La historia secreta de los clubs». [Este es uno de los cientos de libros que describen los clubs masculinos, cofradías y fraternidades tradicionales. Los ejemplos que se dan muestran que los clubs eran lugares alborotados llenos de risas, vínculos masculinos, bebida, invenciones y colaboraciones en varios proyectos, y por encima de todo eran lugares en los que se podía disfrutar de un poco de libertad voluntaria. Participaban tanto solteros como casados, y en la mayoría de los clubs no podían entrar las mujeres.]

[4] E. Belfort Bax, ‘Chivalry Feminism’ in The Fraud of Feminism (1913) “Feminismo caballeroso” El fraude del feminismo.

http://www.avoiceformen.com/sexual-politics/traditionalism-vs-traditionalism/

Google Trends for gynocentrism vs. phallocentrism from January 2011 to 2016:

By Douglas Galbi

Culture has made human beings who they are. Leading human evolutionary biologist Joseph Henrich compellingly makes that point in his recent book, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter. Henrich declares:

The answer to why humans are different is that we crossed the Rubicon. Cultural evolution became cumulative, and then both this accumulating body of information and its cultural products, like fire and food-sharing norms, developed as the central driving forces in human genetic evolution. … Having crossed the Rubicon, we can’t go back. The impact of this transition is underlined by the fact that, despite our long evolutionary history as foragers, we generally can’t survive by hunting and gathering when we have been stripped of that relevant culturally acquired knowledge. … So, yes, we are smart, but not because we stand on the shoulders of giants or are giants ourselves. We stand on the shoulders of a very large pyramid of hobbits. The hobbits do get a bit taller as the pyramid ascends, but it’s still the number of hobbits, not the height of particular hobbits, that’s allowing us to see farther. [1]

Henrich’s explanation draws upon an ancient Roman rhetorical figure involving Julius Caesar, J. R. R. Tolkien’s influential fictional creation of hobbits, a reference from a twelfth-century Latin text of Bernard of Chartres, and perhaps an allusion to the Great Pyramid of Gaza, a monument of bureaucracy. No other organism creates such linguistic figures. Yet that reality differs subtly from the claim that culture is domesticating us and making us smarter. Human cultural evolution doesn’t support a master narrative of inevitable progressive enlightenment. Cultural evolution can make humans more brutal and more stupid.

In Henrich’s view, humans get smart in evolutionary and development time through social learning. Human toddlers outperform chimpanzees and orangutans not in cognitive tests concerning space, quantities, and causality, but only in social learning.[2] Social learning depends on making sense of presence of another like oneself. Long duration, broad bandwidth, synchronous, ephemeral communication, e.g. in-person communication among associates, supports sense of presence and social learning more than does short, narrow bandwidth, asynchronous, stored communication, e.g. short text messaging. Cultural evolution in which communication time shifts to the latter makes persons dumber.

Henrich associates greater population size and greater interconnectedness of individuals with greater cultural development. Those mechanisms suggest the importance of concentrating persons in factories and in cities in spurring the industrial revolutions of the past two centuries. However, England and Wales (and probably other European countries as well) over the past two centuries has experienced a significant cultural change: a massive flattening of the given name distribution. In contrast, symbolic markets in which a larger number of individuals can communicate with each other more cheaply and more quickly tend to promote blockbuster economics. Blockbuster economics involves social success that undermines objective justification for status and exacerbates wealth inequalities. Blockbuster economics also favors cultural homogenization and concentration of symbolic power. Masses who are more easily manipulated are less likely to advance collective intelligence. If the secret to our success is acting like sheep, crossing the Rubicon points to how charismatic leaders like Julius Caesar or Hitler can greatly change human societies.

A good case study of cultural evolution is twelfth-century Europe. That century experienced elite promotion of men’s subservience to women in love (“courtly love”). Some scholars have even interpreted knights brutalizing other knights in service to idealized women as a means of civilizing and domesticating men. That cultural development remains influential in competition for prestige. Thus a best-selling author recently credited feminization of civilization for contributing to the long-run historical decline in violence. That author approvingly proclaimed an astonishing cultural development:

At the top, a consensus has formed within the international {elite} community that violence against women is the most pressing human rights problem remaining in the world. [3]

In the U.S. today, four times more men than women die from violence. Around the world, violence overwhelmingly occurs against men. Elite consensus that violence against women is the most pressing human rights problem in the world today shows that social learning can powerfully promote stupidity.

For social learning to develop a humane, rational collective mind, human societies need intellectual counterbalances to gynocentrism. Henrich promotes ideals of elite intellectual culture:

It’s the willingness and ability of large numbers of individuals at the knowledge frontier to freely interact, exchange views, disagree, learn from each other, build collaborations, trust strangers, and be wrong. [4]

As the recent persecution of Nobel-prize-winning scientist Tim Hunt has made clear, any deviation from the narrow path of social propriety in speaking about women can today cause anyone enormous harm. Men’s biological inferiority to women in social communication has been well-established in scholarly literature. Cultural cognition and the structure of current academic prestige competition has produced comically tendentious experiments, mind-numbing academic “scientific” rhetoric, and wide-spread dissemination of grotesque, highly damaging falsehoods about men.

Preventing the collective mind from going insane requires supporting recalcitrant masculine voices like those in medieval Latin literature. In medieval Europe, men writing in Latin freely expressed outrageous views about wives, the church, and women in general. Latin provided a language for views that couldn’t be expressed in commonly spoken languages. Medieval Latin literature addressed violence against men in ways far more intelligent than currently fashionable anti-men bigotry (talk of “toxic masculinity”). Medieval Latin literature played a crucial role in limiting the damage to the collective mind from vernacular gynocentrism.

With U.S. universities leading efforts, within existing conditions of mass incarceration, to criminalize men for ordinary sexual interactions, the future of the collective mind looks grim. But the die is not cast. Joseph Henrich’s new book The Secret of Our Success underscores the importance of culture. From an economic and political perspective, the most important cultural issue today is collective understanding of women and men in relationship to each other.[5] Under particular human biological predispositions, the twelfth-century European cultural inheritance, imperatives of collegiality in academic competition for prestige, overwhelming mass media patronage of women, and particular national-political circumstances, cultural evolution is making us less humane and less intelligent. To become more humane and more intelligent, our culture must embrace medieval Latin literature of men’s sexed protest and similar recalcitrant masculine voices.

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Notes:

[1] Henrich (2015) pp. 317, 323.

[2] Id. pp. 13-5.

[3] Pinker (2011) p. 414. For related claims, see note [2] in my post on violence and enlightenment.

[4] Henrich (2015) p. 325. Underscoring his emphasis on techno-elite culture, Henrich further states:

It bears emphasizing that once the body of know-how becomes sufficiently complex, cultural evolution will often favor an increasingly complex division of labor (really, a division of information). In this new world, the size of the collective brain will be influenced by the size and interconnectedness of people at the knowledge frontier {emphasis in the original}, the place at which individuals know enough to have any chance of making improvements on existing forms.

Id. Persons in their teens have written highly successful mobile phone apps. Persons who dropped out of college have founded and led enormously powerful, high-tech corporations. The most important and most difficult aspects of culture concern human relations. Life experience and broad literary study contribute greatly to thinking about the most important aspects of culture.

Henrich briefly recognizes that cultural poetic sophistication is more important than factual knowledge:

The framing of the message and the messenger are crucial, but the mini causal models (the “facts”) are merely secondary — only necessary to support any acquired practices or social norms.

Id. p. 328.

[5] Marsupials, once a gregarious species, are now solitary mammals. The significance of that development shouldn’t be minimized. Human pair bonding is being challenged by social promotion of female promiscuity (celebrating slut walks) and men’s opportunistic response to that development. In addition, Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW) is one of the most significant social movements of our time.

References:

Henrich, Joseph. 2015. The secret of our success: how culture is driving human evolution, domesticating our species, and making us smarter. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Pinker, Steven. 2011. The better angels of our nature: why violence has declined. New York: Viking.

Article licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

The following essay entitled Men’s Rights by Mr. Todd proposes a men’s rights conference be held in response to the women’s convention. The author’s compassion and advocacy for men is testament to the skewed gender wars being waged in the 1800s – PW

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MEN’S RIGHTS. — TODD.

Notes:

[1] Egyptian bondage, a bondage the most rigorous and unreasonable, which was inflicted upon the Israelites for several centuries by the hard-hearted kings of Egypt
[2] Maiden Lane, the name of a street in the city of New York.

Source: The Progressive Fourth Reader, for Public and Private Schools. pp. 97-100, (published in 1857 by Bazin & Ellsworth)